PerspectiveClimate Change Will Strain Federal Finances

Published 23 July 2019

The federal government is ill-prepared to shoulder what could be a trillion-dollar fiscal crisis associated with extreme weather, floods, wildfires and other climate disasters through 2100, federal investigators have found. In the latest of a series of reports, the Government Accountability Office says that costs of disaster assistance to taxpayers since 2005 have swelled to nearly $500 billion—and they keep getting higher.

The federal government is ill-prepared to shoulder what could be a trillion-dollar fiscal crisis associated with extreme weather, floods, wildfires and other climate disasters through 2100, federal investigators have found.

In the latest of a series of reports, the Government Accountability Office says that costs of disaster assistance to taxpayers since 2005 have swelled to nearly $500 billion—and they keep getting higher.

“The federal budget, however, does not generally account for disaster assistance provided by Congress or the long-term impacts of climate change on existing federal infrastructure and programs,” GAO found in the 16-page report, which was presented as testimony to Congress by Alfredo Gómez, director of the office’s natural resources and environment team.

Moreover, the government “does not have certain information needed by policymakers to help understand the budgetary impacts of such exposure,” GAO found.

Daniel Cusick writes in Scientific American that the growing frequency and intensity of disasters is being felt in every region of the country and across a broad cross-section of the economy, from energy and real estate to farming and fisheries.

The report includes 21 examples of climate change’s economic impacts, most of which will place additional strain on federal resources. They include infrastructure damage in coastal zones from sea-level rise and storm surges, increased heat-related mortality in the Southeast and Midwest, changes in water supply and demand in the West, and decreased agricultural yields in the southern Plains and Southwest.